Monday, August 27, 2012

Erica's Demonstration at Bloomingdale's

Our rockstar Sales Manager Erica Vendettuoli recently visited Bloomingdale's in Manhattan to give their Cashmere Shop Sales Associates a demonstration with the Laundress Wool & Cashmere Shampoo. Upon hearing about the visit, I was filled with questions - she was kind enough to answer a couple of them below.

What does that training entail exactly, and why now?I generally visit our stores in New York quarterly. During a training I will cover a brief history of the company (why&how we were founded), educate the staff on our products in the store's inventory, and will instruct the staff on how to use it - sometimes I will even do a demo!

For this training with Bloomingdale's, I met with the sales associates in the cashmere department, as they will now be selling our Wool & Cashmere Shampoo. The images are of the demonstration I did - hand washing a cashmere scarf.

What's the purpose of these visits?This is to help the associates with selling The Laundress products. I will always hand out samples of the product for the staff to try; after the sales people have the opportunity to try our products, it becomes much easier to for them to speak to clients about the Laundress.Do you do trainings like this often?I visit all New York stores quarterly- to meet new staff members, introduce new products, and sometimes I will even work on the floor directly with a store's clients. For stores not located in New York, I typically will set up a training conference call towards the same purposes.

What sort of reaction do you get from salespeople - do you ever encounter any surprise that cashmere is best NOT dry cleaned?Most salespeople are very surprised when I tell them it’s actually better to wash their silk and wool/cashmere items - of course, they all agree that they do not like dry cleaning!